


At the Precipice of...

by AltUniverseWash, The Alpha Timeline (AltUniverseWash)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Depression, Earth C (Homestuck), Earth C (pre-return), F/F, Introspection, New Game Plus (Homestuck), Original Character(s), Post-Canon, Post-Sburb (Homestuck), Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Siblings, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:46:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29312058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AltUniverseWash/pseuds/AltUniverseWash, https://archiveofourown.org/users/AltUniverseWash/pseuds/The%20Alpha%20Timeline
Summary: On an Earth-C the gods abandoned, a woman makes her last stand.On an Earth-C the gods have yet to leave, a group of friends and allies make their final preparations.
Relationships: Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam
Comments: 7
Kudos: 9





	1. The Cold and Lonely

Lorelei shivered in the cold — the bite of the wind cutting in though the prefab SkaiaNet shelter that she’d hastily thrown up when she got there. It was _technically_ supposed to include a fully-functioning heater for cold-weather operations, but like almost everything that had “SkaiaNet” attached to it, she was quickly realizing that there was some kind of horrid catch to everything.

They’d find her, eventually.

She’d known it when she stole the transport — thank god for the drone tech that even let her pilot the damn thing — and she knew it now even more keenly. She’d known it as she flew south — further and further down the coast and then out over the open water. She’d been over the water for so long, the endless miles sliding by in a blue-green haze as she watched the fuel indicator like a hawk, waiting for the moment when it would tell her that she was exceeding the maximum distance for a safe return.

The warning had come and gone, and she’d ignored it. Thousands of miles more... until she reached the ice-blaster remnants of the southernmost continent. There, in those frigid wastes, she would make her last stand.

A last stand which, Lorelei reflected, had consisted of setting up a temporary shelter and SkaiaNet terminal and plugging back into the intranet. She still didn’t fully understand _how_ the planetary network functioned, exactly, but she knew enough about the functional details to be able to figure most things out. She’d managed to restore access permissions, at least. For herself and Jo...

She wasn’t sure why she’d bothered with the last part.

She was alone, after all.

* * *

“You can’t fucking do this!” Lorelei’s voice was hoarse in her throat — still burning from the pepper spray they’d used. “We’ve got rights!”

The head of security, a rough-looking man known only as “Mike,” shrugged and tightened the flexi-cuffs on her wrists. “Not my problem, Lor. You’ve done enough damage as it is.”

“What _damage?!_ ” She couldn’t believe this was happened. Yes, the settlement was new. Yes, they were the first generation out of the vats. Yes, everything was still being figured out. But they couldn’t possibly be _this_ oblivious to what was happening. “Mike... you know I’m right about this. It’s not gonna last forever...”

“Ma’am, this really isn’t my problem.”

Lorelei glanced over nervously at the form of Jo lying on the ground — she’d been right there by the door when they raided the server center. One of Mike’s crew had hit her over the head with the end of a rifle and she went down hard. Lorelei kept looking over at her, hoping for some sign of life — hoping that there was something that would let her know that she wasn’t going to be alone in all this.

“Don’t worry about her,” Mike said. He hauled Lorelei to her feet by the wrists and patted her on the shoulder. “Medic’ll check her out and all that. I already checked her pulse and she’ll be fine — just a little bit of a nap. Really... it wasn’t anything personal.”

She didn’t respond. No matter what he said, it sure felt personal to her.

“All right, let’s go talk to Alan,” Mike said quietly. “He’s already pissed at you, so maybe don’t say anything too stupid, okay?”

Her mind reeled — why was he taking her to see a systems tech? A network engineer that she’d been supervising up until he locked her and Jo out of the systems they were supposed to be working on. She’d always known that he was a petty bitch, but that had been more than she’d ever expected from him.

* * *

It was taking forever for the fucking terminal to boot up in the cold. The SkaiaNet tech was already sluggish even under ideal circumstances, and freezing her ass off in a badly-constructed shelter thousands of miles from home was hardly an ideal set of circumstances.

Except it wasn’t really “home” anymore, was it? Even if she wanted to go back... even if she _could_ go back home without being killed on sight, Alan had made sure to salt the earth as far as her ever being able to put down roots there again. He’d burned away everything she’d worked so hard in fifteen years to build up.

Taken away everything she cared about.

First group out of the fucking vats, and they were already repeating the sins of the old world. At least they had the old records available, for a while. It was nice to know exactly how badly they were fucking things up.

After what felt like a small eternity, the computer finally finished its boot sequence and reconnected to the planetary intranet. She’d made sure to leave herself a few back doors into the system during her time as the admin, and she hadn’t bothered to share that information with anyone else. Well... one other person... but that didn’t matter anymore.

Lorelei felt her heart starting to race — this was going to put her on their scopes sooner rather than later. It would take them time to trace down the location of her terminal, especially given the remote location and steps she was taking to actively avoid them, but it would happen eventually. At minimum, she figured she had the twelve hours it would take the SkaiaNet transports to get to her. Twelve hours was a long time, especially if you couldn’t even sleep because of the damn cold.

The back doors were all still there — all the little passages and virtual side-streets that she’d put into place _just in case_ something ever happened. And it seemed as if _just in case_ had come into full effect. After a few minutes, she was able to restore access to the systems and lock Alan’s account out from access. It was, in actuality, only one small corner of the SkaiaNet planetary intranet... but it was _her_ small corner again.

LSMITH | 6/12/0043 | 1:18pm   
======================================   
I don't have a lot of time. They don't know where I am yet but they will soon.   
  
Alan gave them access. The ones with all their fucking guns.   
  
They'll be back in.   
  
I'll figure this out. I have to figure this out.   
======================================

She was going to do everything she could in that time. She didn’t know if the Alternians had tapped into the network... wasn’t sure whether or not the Carapacians that had left their settlement when things started to get bad were in contact with anyone. She wasn’t sure about anything, really, other than that at least one slice of the new world she’d been a part of was starting to burn.

And fire had a way of catching.


	2. On a Mountain in a New World

Jade Harley had been looking for her brother for hours — they’d been working on putting the final touches on the ectobiology chambers when he’d just kind of... vanished. She wasn’t going to admit it to anyone, but she’d had a brief moment of panic where she really thought that he was just kind of... _gone._ She was going to go looking for him and he was going to be consumed by some kind of narrative void — pulled into an unreality that would consume him utterly and leave nothing behind... not even his memory.

She flew quickly, rushing along the treeline so close that the upper branches of the growing pines snapped at her heels. She flew up from the treeline, the world below rapidly becoming a wide expanse that seemed to stretch on forever on every side — a world of greenery and life and possibilities. After so long spent in the darkness of space, it felt good to be able to breathe the air again... even if she _technically_ didn’t need to.

But even with the liberating feeling of flying through this world she was helping to build, she couldn’t help but worry. Down below, everything seemed small... then too-small... then so small that Jade felt herself starting to panic. She flew down lower, until the tiny bottle-brushes of the trees once again resolved themselves into something that was recognizably real and tangible and _large_ and she felt the spring of panic starting to subside.

The worry for John though — that didn’t quiet so easily. As she slowly lit along the trees, sometimes dipping to brush the branches softly, she still worried. He’d seemed so... despondent in the last few months. And even as she did everything in her power to distract herself with the joy of creation, John seemed wholly unwilling to do anything more than the barest amount required of him.

It was ridiculous for her to worry about finding him in the first place, because she found him sitting on top of one of the nearby mountains, not even a ten minute flight away. She recognized the brilliant blue of his god tier outfit from the distance — a beacon against the gray and green and brown of the mountain, highlighted by the light of the late-afternoon sun. She skimmed up and along the rocks, not wanting to stray too far above... just in case another panic attack was waiting up there for her.

She set down beside John softly, a respectful distance away, and cleared her throat softly. He heard her.

“Oh...” he turned and looked at her over his shoulder. “Oh, hey Jade. How’s it going?” He tried to smile, but it had the look of someone who was forcing themselves to perform the motions that he thought a human was _supposed_ to rather than anything actually genuine or heartfelt.

“It’s going fine, John.” Jade walked over and sat down next to her brother, sweeping the tails of her own outfit away from her. She laughed, softly. “Y’know we _could_ make some new outfits. Alchemize something a little more... normal?”

He shrugged — he didn’t care. “Sure, I guess. I kinda got used to them, I guess. You know... how you just get used to stuff, sometimes?”

“Sure,” she tried to smile, but seeing the look on John’s face it felt painfully forced. “What’re you doing up here, anyway?”

Another shrug. “Not sure. Just felt like getting away for a little bit. Flew up here because...” He gestured to the sweeping vista that spanned below them, lit by the amber rays of a sun that was starting to just touch the horizon. A sun that was _like_ their sun but technically wasn’t _their_ capital-S “Sun.”

“It’s pretty,” Jade said quietly. “I like... I like to get away from stuff too, sometimes. Especially when I’ve got things on my mind.”

This time, John laughed. “Is that why you’re here? To ask me if I’ve got a lot on my mind? Jade... we’ve all got a lot on our minds. All the time.”

“It’s just... John, we’ve been here for six months getting all this stuff ready and you’ve just been kind of keeping to yourself. All the others have been working so hard on putting everything together to hand off to the Carapacians and you... I’m not saying you’re not doing any work, but—”

“But you’re saying I’m not doing any work,” John snapped at her, his voice tinged with a slightly-hard edge of annoyance, verging on anger. “Jade, you throw yourself into whatever problems need to be solved every day, then you run off and go god-knows-where for hours, then you go sleep for a few hours and repeat the same fucking process. You’re the last person who should be lecturing to me about healthy habits.”

The response stung — Jade felt her ears folded down and her tail drooping on the ground behind her. “I mean... I’m just decompressing. There’s nothing wrong with that, right?”

“Right,” John laughed in a way that didn’t suggest he found any of this funny. “You’re fine, right?”

“I’m fine,” Jade said. Suddenly, this felt far more personal than she was ready for. Far more intimate in a way that she wasn’t prepared for. She repeated it, because that made it more true — “I’m fine.”

“Sure,” John did that same laugh again and Jade found herself flinching. “If you’re fine... then I’m fine.”


	3. Together

They didn’t have a jail, exactly... it reminded Lorelei more of something she read about in one of the old Earth books... something called a “brig” that they used in ships. A small cell in the back of the security building. Mike marched her in there and shoved her in roughly, and she kept pleading for him to tell her what happened to Jo, but the most he could manage was a gruff “she’s alive, don’t worry about it” and then that was it.

She was left alone again.

The thoughts kept coming after that. The constant, overwhelming sense that something had gone horribly wrong — that some essential variable had been shifted in a way that would ensure that nothing was ever the same again. This world had been around for... she wasn’t sure. The first group out of the vats had been almost forty years ago now, but she knew that the Carapacians had been around for longer than that. The Alternians... the trolls... she wasn’t sure about them. They mostly kept to themselves, but she didn’t imagine that they were on a much quicker schedule than the vatties.

It was all academic at this point. She didn’t have any way of reaching out to anyone — didn’t even have a way to see how far this was going. It had been so easy to focus in on her one specific corner of the world — her one small place in the universe. She knew there were other settlements... towns... cities, even. Forty years and they’d had access to the accumulated grist that the old world had provided. Access to the alchemiters and their ability to formulate literally anything they could wish for.

A world of plenty, built on the principles they’d learned from history. Trade and industry and the free market. All of it fueled by the limitless supply of resources that they’d been gifted by the precursors. She’d bought into it just like the rest of them... the resources were so plentiful that they didn’t even really need to be divided up.

* * *

But they had been. Lorelei shivered in the prefab and cursed to herself for being so short-sighted, just like the rest of them. For decades — since before she was even grown — they’d had a world of plenty. A world where you could rise as high as your merit allowed.

And she’d had merit. Had skills and drive and focus. The kind of zest for life that was characteristic of all the true-born vatties.

Lorelei laughed, her breath coming out as a crystalline fog in the harsh cold of the shelter. At least it was some proof against the wind — she’d have been dead if she’d tried to keep outside.

It was hard, typing in the thick gloves, but she was managing. Every so often, she’d risk removing the gloves to tap out something particularly important, but then they would go right back on. The last thing she wanted was to get frostbite and lose the one final thing that she could do for anyone on this world.

_I should’ve flown somewhere warmer._ It wasn’t worth worrying about now. The transport wouldn’t have enough fuel even to get her back to the mainland, so her options were painfully limited at this point. Stay and wait for Alan to send someone to kill her — and she was quite sure he’d already done that — or fly somewhere to die. Either into the continent itself, toward a tomb made of ice and hard-pack snow... or out into the oceans to a watery grave.

At least in here, she could fight.

LSMITH | 6/12/0043 | 1:48pm   
======================================   
I'm too far away from things to figure this out. The best I can hope for is keeping myself alive long enough to get the word out.   
======================================

Not _win,_ of course. Never win... but she could _fight._

* * *

It had been maybe four or five hours — tracking time was hard in the windowless cell — and they finally brought Jo in. The woman was shaking, her slight frame looking like it was about to collapse at any moment. Lorelei wondered how hard they’d hit her... what they’d actually done to treat her.

Mike opened the door and shoved her inside roughly, sending her tumbling forward and almost landing on her hands and knees — would’ve been on the ground if Lorelei hadn’t been able to catch her. Mike grunted, running a hand over his shaved-smooth bald head and nodded.

“You’re all set. Food in an hour, and Alan wants to speak to you two in a little bit.” And then he was gone.

Jo was sobbing, shaking in Lorelei’s arms. “El... oh my fucking god... what’s happening?”

Lorelei ran her hands through the woman’s mouse-brown hair, pushing aside a stray strand. Carefully checking for evidence of fractures in the skull. Her hand ran over a lump and Jo winced... but that was all. Lorelei let herself have one small measure of relief.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. She hadn’t said anything to Mike before — there was no point to it — but she had no idea why Alan had decided to pick this moment to come and grab them. She knew Alan had been frustrated and resentful, and she knew he’d been playing around in the old SkaiaNet systems a lot.

But they’d been re-assigned to basic integrated systems jobs. The kind of safe jobs that kept them far away from the SkaiaNet equipment and out of the way. They weren’t a threat to Alan or anyone else.

“I just... I want this to stop. I’m tired, El... I’m so fucking tired,” Jo’s sobs had quieted, turning into something resembling a low cough more than anything else. “I’m tired, I’m scared... why aren’t you scared?”

Lorelei shook her head. “Jo... I’m scared all the fucking time.”

Jo wiped her eyes quickly and tried to smile. “Well... at least we can be scared together, right?”

Lorelei nodded and didn’t say anything — she was afraid that anything she would say wouldn’t be very comforting.

* * *

Navigating the SkaiaNet networks was a pain in the ass even under ideal circumstances, and working under a time crunch on bad equipment in the freezing cold was hardly what Lorelei would call “ideal circumstances.” She was trying to make the most of it — trying to catalogue everything that she could of what Alan had been up to over the last couple months.

It wasn’t encouraging.

He was still as lazy about security as always, she saw... which meant that she got a peek at a lot of the messages he was sending to his subordinates... and messages that he was sending to other groups in the region. Apparently he’d been very busy over the last few months — even going back before he’d locked Lorelei out of the network.

He’d left a lot of fingerprints everywhere, and they said a lot. Where the fuck did they get _guns_ from? That many guns?!

By burning through _all_ the grist! They thought they could just make _more_ but they were just figuring this stuff out from the notes the precursors left behind. The notes that were vague, often contradictory, and almost universally unhelpful beyond some very specific and well-ordered notes that explained the process of making more vat-born. They were phasing that out now that there were enough humans around to make more the natural way, but it had ensured that there’d even been a human population in the first place.

But they’d built their whole world around the idea that they’d never run out of the grist — the one resource that made everything function. Lorelei had heard of people trying to make more out of raw materials, but no one had figured out a way to actually create grist. Again, the notes left by the precursors were spectacularly unhelpful in that regard. She read the papers on the subject — the notes read like they’d been written by a bunch of rowdy teenagers, and often omitted key information.

According to Alan’s notes, they had basically nothing left. The grist stores — the vital resource the community was tasked with protecting for its citizens — were almost completely empty.

But now they had guns.

So that was something.


	4. In a Cozy House in a New World

Outside the window, the afternoon sun had turned slowly to a twilight sunset that streamed in through the windows of the Maryam-Lalonde-Lalonde-Maryam household (the name had been a joke by Rose, specifically), providing just enough light for Rose to read by. She could turn on the lamp, of course... but she didn’t _want_ to turn on the lamp. She sighed to herself and set the book down.

She’d started the book that morning on page one-hundred and thirty-one of almost five hundred. But now, after a day spent inside reading instead of working on the ectobiology lab, she had managed to get all the way to page one-hundred and thirty-one. Paragraph four, sentence five, word three. The word was “the” — perhaps one of the most spectacularly uninteresting, yet staggeringly necessary, words ever.

Something that was worth contemplating, apparently, for the better part of eight hours. The word “the.”

And the sense of lonely disconnection that kept creeping in on the edges of everything. The sense that, in spite of having finally walked through the hell of the last three years, something was still wrong. Something was still lurking on there, even though the HorrorTerrors had finally fallen silent.

Maybe it was that silence that she found the most uncomfortable — even if it had been horrible, the sense that something was out there provided a sense of _knowing._ A sense of some kind of certainty of something in the universe.

Now... it felt like she was well and truly alone. Maybe not in the personal sense, but in the broader, cosmic sense. The sense where she was, in fact, the closest thing to a god that she could conclusively prove existed.

She tapped at the cover of the book, looking out the window at the light that was shifting from orange to a dull red to a deep purple as the night slowly came in on her. Inside, the room grew dim and she knew that soon she would need to finally put on that fucking lamp to be able to get ready for bed. Or, maybe, to do some writing. She almost had to laugh at that one.

From the front of the house, Rose heard the sound of a door opening and the soft footsteps of someone coming inside.

“Rose?” Kanaya’s voice from the front hallway — the hallway that had seen its fair share of comings and goings over the last six months. “Rose? Are you up? All the lights are off.”

“I’m in here,” Rose responded — probably too quietly for Kanaya to hear. She’d get back to the small study in the back of the house eventually. She spent most of her time there... often fell asleep there. Kanaya’s footsteps moved through the hallway to their small kitchen. She stopped and Rose recognized the sound of her tossing her bag on the counter. More footsteps, walking to the door to the study.

Hesitant... the footsteps stopped. A pause. A knock.

“Rose? Are you awake?”

“Mmmm...” Rose responded, just barely loud enough for Kanaya to hear. There was a click of the latch as Kanaya opened it.

“Darling? Why are you sitting here in the dark?” She turned to the sound of Kanaya’s voice and shrugged. “Do you want me to switch on the overhead illumination device?”

She shook her head absently, still tapping the book next to her. Kanaya crossed the room, bent over, and kissed her quickly on the cheek. “I missed you today, darling.”

“Missed you too, Kanaya,” she muttered. “Just got caught up on reading...”

She caught the sight of Kanaya looking down at the book next to her, and heard the slow draw of breath. “Oh? Are you enjoying page one-hundred thirty-one more than usual today?” The tone was playfully chiding, but Rose felt something in it cut into her and she turned away, toward the window that was now a picture of the shadowed trees at the edge of the plot of land where their little house sat.

“It’s the same as always.” She sighed. “What about you? Did you have a pleasant day at the caverns?”

“Yes, thank you,” Kanaya responded... and Rose could hear something under her voice that sounded so painfully _familiar._ “Roxy gave me a ride to the caverns on her way to help the Carapacians set up some of their new systems in the region to help with the Alternians.”

Rose smiled at the window. “Hmm... that’s nice, darling. How’s Roxy doing?”

She didn’t care how Roxy was doing. Not out of any kind of malice or genuine lack of interest in Roxy specifically, but because she couldn’t seem to muster the energy to care about _anything_ at the moment. She felt the brush of Kanaya’s skirt as she sat down on the arm of the armchair. Felt the soft pressure of a hand on her shoulder.

“Are you tired?” The concern in her voice — the gentle way that she threaded her fingers into Rose’s thick curls. Rose felt herself relax... just a little bit.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “I’m tired. I want to go home.”

“You _are_ home, darling.”

She sighed, and the sigh carried the weight of everything from the last four years. From the last seventeen years. From a lifetime of expectation and the internalized need to be better than...

...than what?

“No, I’m not,” Rose said, more to herself than Kanaya. “We’re going to be leaving in a couple days and... then what?”

“I believe that Jade has indicated she can age the entire planet up, at least from a perspective outside of this specific spacetime instance. She has indicated that while it is a technical procedure, she believes it is well within her capabilities.”

“No... I know that,” Rose sighed. “I don’t mean mechanically. I mean, what are we going to _do?_ This place—” she gestured around the room — “this place isn’t even a home. It’s just a... a temporary waystation on our journey to something greater. Just like everywhere else we’ve been for the last four years. And then what? We just settle down into a life of domestic bliss? Pretend to be happy until the eternity clock runs out or whatever fucking absurd horseshit the universe decides to throw at us next?”

“That is...” Kanaya stopped and clicked her tongue against her cheek. “Darling, you are tired.”

“I already said that...”

Kanaya reached down, and all of a sudden Rose felt herself folded into an embrace that was warm and soft and smelled faintly of the pine woods that were everywhere in this part of Earth-C. Rose finally let her body relax, and she felt some small measure of the stress lifting... but only a small measure.

“You are tired because we have been working ourselves to the bone to accomplish a great task. Perhaps the last truly great task before we depart to leave the care of this world in the capable hands of others. And then we can have our well-deserved rest. We can come back and find what meaning we might in this world... to see it forward as a thriving society rather than to simply be the custodians of dying worlds.”

That sounded good. But it sounded like a lie — a well-practiced lie that had been told so many times that even the teller believed it herself. Rose smiled, and reached up to put her hand around the back of Kanaya’s neck. She drew her in and kissed her softly, closing her eyes.

Maybe, in the end, it would be okay.

That sounded good.

But it sounded like a lie.


	5. Forever in Flames

She knew that there was so much more to it than her one settlement — the one place that she’d called home for thirty-five years. She’d been alive long enough to see the last of the vat-born. Long enough to see them starting to rebuild whole cities with the technology that the precursors left behind. Long enough to see them making contact with the Alternian colonies and trying to build a meaningful relationship with the Carapacians and consorts who shared a space with them.

Long enough to see a few fools run to burn that to the ground in service of their desire for more power. They had the benefit of the knowledge of the old world combined with owing nothing to it. And what was that going to amount to, in the end?

Lorelie didn’t care — she wouldn’t live long enough to see it happen. In a few hours, they’d find her and they’d send someone and then... well, they had all those guns, after all.

LSMITH | 6/12/0043 | 3:15pm  
======================================   
What's the point of all this? We had the benefit of knowing our own fucking creators... sort of. But folks are still gonna try to take every scrap they can for themselves and leave nothing behind.  
  
I hope it all burns to the fucking ground.   
======================================

She smiled... and then she started to laugh... and by the time she realized that was even happening, she had moved all the way through the crying. The tears and the snot stuck up in her nose and froze on her face, even in the shelter, and she didn’t even care. Even if there was something to go back to in the abstract sense of the word, there was nothing for _her_ to go back to.

* * *

They were sitting down and holding hands when Mike came back.

“Alan wants to see you,” he said. That was all he said. They got up and followed him and the guard that was with him — two men with big guns — to the municipal building that both of them had worked side-by-side in for more than a decade.

“I remember when they built this place,” Jo said softly, mostly to herself. “I remember seeing it as a girl and thinking how cool it’d be to be a part of that one day.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Mike said tersely. So Jo shut up, and Lorelei didn’t say anything. They walked along in silence, passing in under the grand, sweeping archways that’d been constructed based on some reference from an old Earth book that had been left by the precursors. In through the lobby made of alchemized marble — once the one act of hubris by the burgeoning settlement, but now just another on an ever-growing list.

Off the central hall, the ceiling dropped down and they were just into offices now. Alan had one right down at the end — the same office he’d always had. But now on the door it said “Mayor” instead of “Network Engineer” so maybe his attempts at humility were falling a bit flat. Mike shoved them in through the door, and he and his rough-looking friend stepped in after and shut the door. Alan was there at the desk, sitting with his elbows propped in front of him and a stupid smile on his face like nothing had actually happened.

“Well, hello there.” In that moment, Lorelei wanted to leap across the deck and beat him until he couldn’t move anymore. This bastard, who was committed to aiding and abetting the worst of the worst. Who was so focused on grabbing for power that he lost sight of everything else.

“What? You don’t have anything smart to say now?” Alan shook his head. “Shame. I tried to be reasonable about this — tried to keep you on board with it. You know that all these old SkaiaNet systems are just waiting for us to claim their knowledge.” He stopped and squinted at the two women in turn.

“Why am I even doing this whole speech? You both know where I stand on this. Here’s the deal. I want your help unlocking the systems. I need to know why the grist production isn’t working, and you can help me with that. Both of you.” He waved at Jo dismissively, but kept looking at Lorelei. “So, you know... help me or don’t.”

“I’m not fucking helping you!” Lorelei shouted. Alan nodded — he’d been expecting that response. He snapped his fingers and pointed to Mike.

Nothing was real in the next five seconds.

Mike drew a pistol from a holster at his side, put the gun to Jo’s head, and pulled the trigger.

The noise was deafening in the enclosed space of the office. Lorelei was screaming. Alan was yelling.

“NO YOU FUCKING IDIOT! WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!”

Mike was... shrugging.

There wasn’t time to think.

She grabbed the pistol — the pistol that had just killed her girlfriend — and wrenched it from Mike’s grip before he had a chance to respond. Acting purely on instinct, she turned to the other man — the rough man — and she pulled the trigger.

Another deafening bark — it sounded less loud and for a second Lorelei wondered about her hearing — and the man was clutching at his chest and dropping the rifle he was carrying.

Lorelei ran out the door.

* * *

There wasn’t much else she could do but cry now. She’d been through the systems over and over, looking for something that would give her answers.

Answers to _what_ , exactly? She wasn’t even sure anymore.

The problem wasn’t a lack of resources — the grist had never been meant to last forever. At best, it had been a way for them to jump-start society... to put in place the systems that would carry them forward into this new era. It had been an appealing idea... to work side-by-side with the Carapacians, the consorts, and the Alternians. To link together in one grand venture that would make a truly better world.

But, at least for now, they’d failed in that venture.

Back on the ship, the pistol that had killed her girlfriend was still there, sitting next to the control console. Its presence weighed heavy in her mind — tempted her with its promise. Lorelei sighed... and she kept typing. There was some chance, maybe, of making a difference. If not finding answers, then at least letting someone know what was happening here.

It was worthwhile, even in its futility.


	6. On a Lonely Night in a New World

Roxy sat by herself at midnight on a hill, looking out at the moon-drenched little settlement below. Because sitting by yourself at midnight was something that normal people did for completely normal reasons. Reasons like feeling absolutely overwhelmed by the press and rush and noise of being in among the people down there. Feeling like you were going to scream at any minute because people kept _talking_ to you and they wouldn’t fucking _stop_ and even though they were your friends you still wanted to bury your head in your hands and yell until your voice turned red and raw and wouldn’t work right anymore.

Normal reasons.

She liked being among the Carapacians — she was used to them... used to talking with her hands and being able to focus on two things at once while having a conversation with them. No incessant voices to drive nails into her skull when she got a little too stressed out. She felt like she knew them better than she knew the friends she’d been through the game with — even the ones she’d been talking to for so long. Jake and Jane and Dirk had been basically abstract concepts for so long, it was weird to actually have them be real people that she could, theoretically, interact with in the real space she had to live in more and more.

“Yup just sittin’ here being fuckin’ normal.” She wasn’t talking to anyone, because there wasn’t anyone there to talk to. That was also normal — isolating yourself from everyone who claimed to care about you because you weren’t sure how to process everything you were feeling.

At least she could find meaning in what she could do for them. That was something, and that mattered... and it couldn’t be taken away from her.

Roxy sighed, letting her thoughts drift out over the trees, lit in the soft moonlight. She didn’t know what kind of people were going to be in this new world when they came back to it a few decades down the road... but whoever they were, they were going to be inheriting a better world than she had. A world free from the oppression of the Condesce and the oligarchies of the old Earth that John and the rest had come from. She hoped that they would make the most of it.

Somewhere off to the side, there was a shift in the wind and the soft noise of feet padding to the ground. Something _familiar_ about the way it sounded.

“Jane?”

“Yeah.” The voice from to the side — the sound of the footsteps moving closer. Jane was there, wearing her tawny god tier outfit. She smiled at Roxy, her eyes crinkling up behind her glasses. “You mind if I hang out for a bit?”

“You wanna hang? At... midnight?” Roxy didn’t even mind — she was just making conversation at that point.

Jane nodded. “Sure!”

“Eh... what the fuck?” Roxy shrugged and patted the ground next to her. “Take a seat, girl. Just chilling here — lookin’ at the moonlight and the trees and shit.”

Jane sat next to her, letting herself drop onto the ground with a little puff of wind. She leaned back, propping herself up with her hands and leaning over toward Roxy. Together, they sat quietly for a while, not saying anything to each other. The moon was there to keep them company, and in its company they sat, everything at peace.

“You ready for tomorrow?” Jane finally asked, still looking out over the trees. Roxy shrugged and reached down to pick up a little pebble and toss it out over the grassy expanse of the hill, where it fell silently in the darkness.

“Yeah, sure...” Roxy let her voice trail off — she hugged her knees up to her chest and sighed. “This is what we’ve been working so hard for, right? Giving this world a real future and shit, yeah?”

“Yes,” Jane said “That’s the idea.” She shifted in place and yawned and suddenly Roxy realized how incredibly _tired_ she felt. The exhaustion weighed on her of a lifetime spent running and hiding and fighting to survive. Now that was all finally coming to an end, at last, and all she could think was that she wasn’t sure what to do with herself anymore.

“Jane?”

“Mmm?” Jane looked out over the same moonlit field that she did, and Roxy wondered if she was thinking the same things. Wondered if she was pondering how to make the world they were building a better one than the one they’d left behind.

“What do you think it’s gonna be like — the world we’re making here? You know... once we jump it forward and the Carapacians and all them get a chance to get it started. What kind of world do you want to help build?”

Jane shrugged. “One where people can be productive and flourish. One where they can be free. Why?”

“Just curious.”

Jane nodded and leaned forward, letting her chin drop down to her chest and closing her eyes. “What about you, Roxy? What sort of world do you want to see?”

Roxy sat and thought for a minute before she answered. There were a lot of possible things she could say — a lot of things she was hoping they’d be able to address as they saw this new world up from the beginning. And she could envision so many different ways to do that... but in the end, there was one thing that all of them had in common.

“One that’s _kind._ ”


	7. Burn

It was getting colder in the shelter. At first, Lorelei thought it was just her imagination, but after a few hours she could feel it. The SkaiaNet shelter had been designed for cold weather, but it had been designed to operate with support. With heating equipment. Possibly in conditions that weren’t the falling Antarctic weather.

On another Earth, the place she was sitting had a name. She remembered it from one of the old Earth history books that had been left behind for all of the vat-born to read up on the history of a world that was never theirs.

None of it mattered.

Lorelei huddled up on herself for warmth and cried, feeling the tears glaze up on her cheeks. Before it got too cold, she tapped away at the terminal...

LSMITH | 6/12/0043 | 7:21pm

======================================   
How long's it been? 8 hours? That's almost long enough that they can find me.

I'm such a small part of all of this. Everyone is such a small part of it. What we do here... it won't matter in the long run, because it'll disappear into the fabric of forever.

Even if the creators came back tomorrow, it wouldn't change these people's hearts.   
======================================

* * *

Lorelei ran. She ran as fast as she could, bolting out of the building and making her way straight to the hangar where they kept their transports. If one of them was idling, she might have a chance. She at least knew how to set their automated destination programming. That was all she needed — a way to get free and figure things out.

What had just happened burned inside of her — took her guts and tossed them around inside until she felt like throwing up. But there wasn’t anything she could do to stop what had already happened. Jo was dead. Lorelei cried... but she ran.

They would be following her shortly, as soon as they attended to that henchman’s wounds. She’d bought herself maybe ten minutes at the most, and she would need to get in the air as soon as possible. Maybe she could get ahead of them and force them to have to pull the log data... and she could do something to make that a lot harder for them. All she needed was a few minutes’ head start.

Ignoring the curious stares as she ran, she cleared the embankment that led down to where the hangar was. Out on the field that was used as a landing strip, Lorelei could see one of the standard SkaiaNet automated transports idling — they were probably taking it out for a test run or something. A technician stood next to the aircraft, checking some diagnostics or other on a small tablet.

Waving the pistol, Lorelei ran up on him.

“Get away from the fucking bird!” she screamed, pointing the pistol at him. He immediately dropped the table in the dirt and raised his hands.

“Oh shit! Do whatever you need to do!”

“Give me the control fob for the transport!” Lorelei yelled, pointing the pistol at the man’s head. He reached inside his coveralls and took out a small piece of plastic. Lorelei walked up and grabbed it out of his hands and nodded. “Good. Now get the fuck away from here!” The man didn’t need a second asking — he turned and bolted back towards the settlement without stopping.

Lorelei ran inside the transport and sealed the door behind her. Tucking the pistol away in her belt, she ran to the controls and strapped herself in. She needed somewhere far away. Somewhere that would give her the space she needed to figure out what to do next. In a near-panic, she entered the only coordinates she could remember.

Something from some old-Earth book.

68°34′36″S

77°58′03″E

* * *

They would be coming soon enough, but Lorelei didn’t think she’d actually survive long enough to face whatever they planned to do to her. The temperature was plummeting rapidly and even with the gear she had from the transport, she doubted that it was going to be enough. Eventually, she would succumb to hypothermia — she would want to go to sleep, and then she wouldn’t wake up again.

And that wouldn’t be so bad, would it?

In the grand scheme of things, she didn’t mean anything. Not even a footnote in history, but a mere dot of ink among the larger story of what was happening.

They’d had their golden years — the days when it seemed like the grist would never run out and they could live off the products of the alchemiters forever. For a long time, Lorelei had bought into the falsehood as well. Now she couldn’t, and it didn’t matter.

She was getting tired, and the cold didn’t seem to be bothering her as much anymore.

That was good.

It was pleasant.

Without another thought, Lorelei Smith dropped into the last dreamless sleep she would ever have.

**Author's Note:**

> [Find out more](https://www.hsnewgameplus.com)


End file.
